


Those Who Walk in the Light

by RedheadAmongWolves



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Biblical References, Don't worry, Feels, Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, demon!Raylan, fallen angel!Boyd, hurt the things u love lol, yep it's the demon AU no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 19:52:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17189339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedheadAmongWolves/pseuds/RedheadAmongWolves
Summary: Raylan returns to Harlan, and Boyd can feel the end coming.





	Those Who Walk in the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Hi I’m late to the party but I brought snacks. 
> 
> inspired by just everything about seasons 1 and 2 and the theme song line of “I’m fightin for my soul” lol bye

4.

Raylan returns to Harlan, and Boyd can feel the end coming.

Even before he even sees him, Boyd knows when he arrives. The shadows in the hollers get darker, longer, the trees start growing faces, and the streets feel different underfoot, like the tar is bubbling up, trying to swallow the town whole. Boyd thought he would miss what Harlan had been in Raylan’s absence, but instead he looks back and sees the county was empty and stale, muted, and now it has returned to what it was always meant to be, this purgatory, this monster’s playpen, this birthplace of the fallen.

Raylan returns as shining as ever, and Boyd almost has to squint to look at him. Boyd grins, and the demon grins back, and they are still locked on opposing sides of this war, equal and opposite reactions, light and dark, neither truly complete without the other and Boyd, a bullet hole in his chest in a dining room, tilts his face to the sun, feels Raylan’s eyes following him like fire on his skin, and lets the voices rush in once again.

 

 

1.

There was a time when both of them were smoke, one reeking of sulfur and the other like the wisp following an acolyte snuffing out a candle. One was bitter and one was loss, and now they’ve traded places, and Boyd would laugh if he weren’t so angry.

But Raylan has always had him beat in the anger department, too. Raylan is the angriest creature on God’s good earth, and that is why Raylan will never be forgiven, because he cannot forgive himself. Boyd knew this from the very beginning, but he would never tell him.

Beside Raylan, Boyd’s anger is homesickness, making him a veteran who misses the battlefield because it makes more sense.

They met for the first time in a war, when Boyd still had his sword and Raylan had a mouth like a gun, and neither of them had names. Just faceless soldiers in their respective legions, following orders from leaders they had never seen, because that is what they were created to do. They met in a blood-soaked field at twilight. Boyd saw him first.

The demon was a black, coiling thing, like an oil slick with limbs, and was bent over a puddle of what used to be one of its kind, killed by one of Boyd’s brothers. Boyd adjusted his grip on his blade and marched forward, lifting the weapon above his head, ready to bring it down on the monster’s neck, when it looked up.

And it didn’t move. Boyd froze, locked in its eyes, two pools of boiling red, but eyes nevertheless, and they stared at each other, one ready to die, one ready to kill, and Boyd thinks he knew even then. Visions were his brothers’ forte, while Boyd was a swing first, think later kind of warrior, but he thinks he saw the future play out in those eyes.

“What are you waiting for?” it rasped, its gash of a mouth not moving, and Boyd felt a chill wrack down his bones, all six sets of his wings puffing. What was he waiting for? _Move_ , he willed to his arms, but they didn’t listen, and the demon looked confused, and then furious.

“Mercy doesn’t look good on you,” it spat, the ground by Boyd’s foot sizzling. Still the sword didn’t fall.

The demon vanished in a thunderclap of smoke, and Boyd was left staring at the blood left behind, thinking, _how does it still bleed_.

Millenia later, as Boyd watched his Father infest His perfect creation with so many parasites, he thought of the demon, its brother in its claws, and wondered at the point of bleeding for fathers who didn’t lift the blade.

 

 

5. 

Boyd survives the dining room, is reborn at Raylan’s hands yet again, flesh and bone instead of oil, but he swears he can still feel the grease against his fingers when they shake hands. Maybe that’s why Raylan stopped touching him.

“What are you doing, Boyd?” Raylan asks, hat casting his face in shadows as he looks over the campgrounds where Boyd and his disciples have built their foundling church.  

“I am leading the lost into the light, Raylan,” Boyd smiles, all floating words and spread hands like a benediction. Raylan huffs, which makes Boyd smile wider. “I am doing my Father’s bidding.”

“We all know how you felt about your chores,” Raylan says, ambiguous enough that the other marshals within hearing distance don’t arch any eyebrows.

“I am made new, Raylan, you cannot spite me for this.”

“Can’t I?” Raylan asks, faux-casualness laced with bitterness. “I can’t help but remember you doing the same to me, once upon a coal mine.”

And this, Boyd still isn’t quite sure how he feels about. He thinks about the fallen angel and the demon at the mouth of the mine, decades ago, hands scorching skin, thinks about the demon praying, thinks about how the words sounded wrong in its mouth, even worse than in Boyd’s. Can’t quite imagine that demon sauntering through the pearly gates into Boyd’s old stomping grounds. He keeps his answer noncommittal.

“I suppose we have the same goal now, Raylan. Both trying to get to the man up top.”

Raylan leans in close, voice a thunder rumble. “And yet, which one of us do you think He’d actually let in?” Boyd’s blood goes icy. Raylan presses on. “If anything, hasn’t it occurred to you that, of the two of us, I might be the one He’s more inclined to forgive? After all, I can’t help where I was born, but I am seeking the light. You’re a little boy who threw a fit and now wants to come back inside cause it’s too cold out.”

“There’s no need for such hostility,” Boyd says, trying to keep the smile on his face, but it feels like a grimace. “By your definition, we’re both men of God.”

Raylan spits near Boyd’s feet. He looks up, and his eyes are dark, fiery. He opens his mouth to speak, and for a moment, Boyd thinks he’ll hear that rasp once more, the one from the day they met.

“Mercy doesn’t look good on you,” Raylan says, and Boyd watches him leave.

 

 

2.

Something wet lands on Boyd’s cheek, and he is startled back into consciousness.   

When he opens his eyes, sunlight floods his vision, blinding him until a dark shadow cuts across it. Boyd blinks rapidly, trying to adjust, and skitters back with a gasp as he realizes the shadow is a demon.

The sudden movement tears at something deep in Boyd and he lets out a strangled scream and crumples on his arms, falling in something wet again, and looks down to find himself sprawled in a pool of blood as it seeps into the damp soil beneath him. He looks up again, finds the demon reaching out, one of its clawed hands dripping more blood, and Boyd swipes at his own face, his hands staining red as he pulls them away.

Boyd rolls over and retches bile into the dirt. Blood speckles the ground. He heaves.

“Hey,” the demon says, “you okay?” And Boyd can’t fight it-- he starts laughing.

It all surges back in a rush. The trial, the plummet, the feathers ripped out of his spine one by one as he tumbled towards the surface of the earth. He knows he must look insane, blood-stained mouth, streaked face, skin shredded and robes in tatters, but he can’t stop. It is the most hilarious thing in the universe, suddenly. Because, of course, he knows exactly who the demon standing over him is. He is wearing a new skin, as _human_ as Boyd now, as human as either of them could ever be, but Boyd knows those eyes, because he has thought about them every single day since they’d vanished into smoke in front of him.

The demon seems to recognize him, too, because those eyes go wide with disbelief.

Boyd stops laughing, tears streaming down his face,

“I remember you,” the demon tells him.

Boyd sighs, closing his eyes and falling back on the blood-stained earth.

“What are you doing here?” the demon asks.

Boyd shrugs, a giggle escaping his lips. “Moved out,” he says simply, and his voice is gravel, scraped raw from screaming. “You?”

He opens his eyes, looking back up at the creature, who is watching him, considering, expression unreadable.

“The same,” it says finally.

They stay there in silence, for a long while, and Boyd stares up at the sky, so blue it must be mocking him, clouds like cotton candy. He wonders if his Father is watching him. He wonders if his Father even cares that he has left. Boyd has never felt it more acutely than he does now, that this earth was surely meant to be a cage. And he has just been fed to the lions.

“I’ve heard of this place called Harlan,” the demon says suddenly, making Boyd startle out of his head, taking a second longer to process what the creature just said. It was just a statement. Not a question, not a suggestion. Boyd can lie here until the lions come, or he can follow this demon one step more.

Boyd lifts a hand, and the demon takes it in his, still stained with Boyd’s blood, and pulls him to his feet.

“Boyd,” the fallen angel says, teeth grit against the pain. The demon tilts its head.

“Raylan.”

Boyd’s faith was tied to Raylan; it always has been.

Kentucky is not the first place thought of when looking for a new home for the damned, only maybe it is. Harlan has blood in its mountains and faith in its coal, and it sings to Boyd, who is ruined and wingless and hungry for a war that no one was fighting anymore. Oh, the humans are still fighting, like toddlers scuffling on the grass, and that makes Boyd laugh, bitter and cold, but his hands curl into fists because there isn’t a sword to grasp anymore, and his shoulders creep up around his ears because he is always waiting for the shadows to sprout wings and lunge. They call him a lit fuse, call him wild, call him crazy, and he just bares his teeth and calls it a smile.

Raylan and he part ways when they get there, but they remain excruciatingly aware of each other, not speaking but circling around one another like dogs, feeling out this new dichotomy. Boyd sees Raylan in a way those hicks can’t, sees the blood still dripping down his arms, slipping from his eyes down his cheeks, into the corners of his lips. Boyd is bloodthirsty in an unfamiliar way, no grace to feed him, and he scratches at his skin like it doesn’t fit right, watches Raylan wear his vessel like it was made for him, chin held high, righteous, like he has wings unfurling across his shoulders and damned if Boyd could sometimes see the feathers too.

He does not call the growling in his stomach envy, but it is nameless without it.  

 

 

6.

Deep down, in the dark red center of his being, in the flickers and sputters and pleas for oxygen, Raylan knows he won’t get into Heaven. He knows. He doesn’t really waste time crying over it, though, so he just doesn’t go to church on Sundays. Gently dodges Art’s offers to attend communion, pretends to have work when Winona puts on her Sunday best, sends Helen’s calls to voicemail and instead sits in a diner the next town over until he knows the chapels have emptied. He pretends the runny eggs and burnt toast are his personal eucharist, says a small prayer over his coffee, and ignores the empty feeling in his stomach where he knows a soul should probably sit.

But then Boyd finds Jesus again, or some two-bit impersonator of Him, and Raylan finds himself following Boyd’s shadow through Harlan, wondering if he’d be able to see wings.

He follows Boyd to his disciples and their hobo-town tents, watches Boyd from behind the trees as the man waxes poetic and rolls the Psalms over his tongue like they’re fine whiskey. He follows Boyd to Harlan’s one and only church, watches from beyond the parking lot, catching hymns on the breeze.

He’s content with just watching, for a while, until on the day after Boyd gets hauled in for questioning and Art slams a Bible down on his knuckles, the sun high in a clear sky, Raylan decides to wait outside for Boyd. Maybe in apology. Maybe just curiosity. The congregation filters out in their pastels and shiny shoes, and Raylan smiles graciously at them, tips his hat to get a few smiles from the ladies, and there Boyd is at the tail, clutching his Bible, decked in jeans that don’t have holes and his one flannel that has never seen the inside of a mine. He gives Raylan a long look when he sees him leaning up against the tree, just on the outskirts of the property, and walks up to him slow and considering, boot heels crunching on the gravel.

“Can you even come in here?” Boyd asks in lieu of a greeting, only it’s not really a question, more like he’s just figured something out.

Raylan quirks a smile, but it’s tight. Casts a glance over his shoulder to make sure the parishioners are out of earshot. “Probably not a good look if I start hollering when they splash me.”

“They don’t baptize us every Sunday.”

“I’m not too keen to test the theory, Boyd.”

Boyd pauses, his mouth open like he’s about to say something, then looks back at the chapel. The pastor is shaking hands with the last parishioner through the door and turning away, leaving the doors open to let the cool autumn air sweep through the pews one last time before winter comes and the doors are pulled tight. Boyd turns back to Raylan, seeming to size him up for a moment.

“C’mon,” he says suddenly, with a jerk of his shoulder. Raylan arches an eyebrow.

“Pardon?”

“C’mon. They won’t think anything of it. Just a member of the flock giving a new sheep the grand tour.”

Raylan’s incredulous. “Did you hear any of what I just said?”

“If you really are seeking our Father’s forgiveness, it’s probably not too smart to turn down an invitation to come into His house.” _Our Father_ , Boyd had said, probably completely on accident, but he doesn’t show any recognition or regret that he said it. It makes Raylan’s chest do funny things.

Raylan’s tongue takes a second to work. “Hadn’t considered that,” he says, half to himself.

One boot at a time, he steps through the gates and onto the gravel path, and so far, so good. No sizzling or steaming or screaming. He ignores Boyd’s amused eyebrow and follows him up the church steps, slowly, feeling the old wood creak and bend slightly under his boots.

He pauses in the threshold as Boyd moves ahead of him, walking backwards down the aisle, before letting his shoe find the sanded-smooth wood.

“Can’t see any flames from here,” Boyd says, his voice soft, and Raylan flicks him a half-hearted irritated glance.

He moves slowly down the center aisle, looking first at the pews, all shiny and orderly, then craning his head back to see the rafters, dark wood against the sloped white roof, a few cobwebs here and there. The altar is just a wooden table with a cloth draped over it, an old gold-edged Bible open to the gospel propped on top of it, a few candles with the smoke still wafting through the air. It’s no St. Patrick’s Cathedral, certainly no Notre Dame, but God help him, it might just be the most beautiful thing Raylan’s ever seen.

He fell in love with a church like this when he first rose from Hell, dragging himself up from the cinders to a world of dust and heat, not totally unlike the one he’d just left, where roads were just dirt paths and houses were paper against the winds. He’d come to collect a debt but faltered outside a clapboard chapel to listen to the music. He followed that music all the way through the darkness, flames licking at his heels, shrieking his name, until he finally broke the surface.

They welcomed him in, gave him shelter and clothes and food. He wandered, mostly to escape the shadows trying to catch him and pull him back, but also because he found something new and more marvelous than the last to look at on every corner, and each new city brought someone acting in the name of their God, letting him into their lives if only for an evening.

He got the hat off a dead man in Wyoming. The first prayer he ever said was over his body, and the words tasted like honey leaving his lips.

He knows Boyd despised humans because of their capacity for cruelty. But Raylan loved them because of their capacity for mercy.

Not unlike an angel he met, once.

“So?” Boyd asks, from the altar, and Raylan can’t help but beam at him. The hole in his stomach still gapes, but the wind isn’t quite as cold.

 

 

7.

Boyd became a preacher because he thought it would please Him. He tried to make it his mission to reach those most in the shadows and pull them into the light. But either the dark was too strong, or the light did not want them. Or maybe Boyd just wasn’t really interested in saving any souls.

He leaves behind half a dozen graves, dirt still damp under his nails, and goes back to the only place he can think of.

In the mine, things make sense. In the mine, Boyd sees clearly, even as he can see nothing. You can’t tell up from down and he is deep inside God’s good earth as it was when it was Made, and if Boyd turns away from the miners at his back, fits his headphones over his ears to muffle the ruckus, then just for a moment, he can pretend it’s just him in the dark, just him in the vast nothingness, back before the seven days and before the human infestation skittered over the surface and swallowed up everything beautiful his Father made. Even the beautiful is made ugly when ugly beings live there. He’d rather see the world burn than see them chip it away.

That’s why he’s always liked the explosives. Down here, he’s the one creating light. He’s the one demolishing the dark. He’s the one creating. And his world, Remade in the perfect image of His father, is absent its parasites.

When he first came to Harlan, and Raylan was at his side in the dark, he’d felt mighty. Maybe he came back to try and find that feeling again. Right now he just feels empty.

Boyd goes back to the vandalized church only once and stares at its broken windows and graffiti and ugliness from what feels like a lifetime ago and does not recognize it. He hopes this means no trace of it is left inside of him. He fears it means he did not learn his lesson.

 

 

3.

Raylan shows up at the mouth of the mine and Boyd feels his heart leap into his throat.

In his years in Harlan, he has learned the mountain serves as a sort of light to the moths. Humanity has let down Raylan yet again, and now he’s here, in Boyd’s territory, and all Raylan needs is a little shove down a mine shaft to finally see things through Boyd’s eyes. Metaphorically, of course.

To Boyd, they are two sides of the same coin, the drifting demon and the exiled angel, fatherless and Fatherless, and oh, to think of what they could do together. They both end up deep in the earth, and Boyd thinks, _this is my chance to show him_.

Boyd teaches him the music of the mountain, the percussion of the semtex and the chimes of the pickaxes, the violin strings of the elevator cables. He saves Raylan’s life from a crescendo and never wants to let go of his hand.

That night, after he’s washed the dust down the shower drain, Boyd stops by Raylan’s house, and they drive up to the mountain, the winding narrow road lit only by moonlight. The shaft is cordoned off with yellow tape but Boyd twines his fingers through Raylan’s again and leads him through it. Just far enough inside they can’t see the sky anymore.

There’s coal dust thick in the air between them and Boyd doesn’t know who moves first, only finds his mouth on Raylan’s, hands everywhere, skin fire and hearts racing and Boyd swears he almost hears the hymns of a past life drifting through the tunnel.

Raylan’s lips find his jaw, his neck, his collarbone. Boyd tugs him down, down, down.

After, they are so blackened by coal dust Boyd can’t tell where he ends and Raylan begins. It is the most beautiful sight he has ever seen. They sit against the wall, folded around each other, Raylan’s breath rustling through Boyd’s hair.

Boyd presses his mouth to Raylan’s clavicle, murmurs, “Just for a moment, right now, no one else exists.” And, after a breath, “Just us.”

Raylan’s voice is a rumble against Boyd’s temple.

“I’m leaving Harlan.”

Boyd closes his eyes. “No, you aren’t,” he denies, but he knows it’s useless.

“I can’t stay here, Boyd.”

“Why? It’s perfect, Raylan, just look--”

“I see nothing, Boyd,” Raylan says. “That’s the point. There’s too much darkness for anything to get through.”

“What use do we have for _light_?” Boyd growls, pushing away. Raylan’s hands close around empty air but he does not reach for Boyd. His eyes are tar pits, deep and endless. “Light has done nothing but betray us.”

“I don’t…” Raylan exhales, and it’s shaky, and he looks somewhere towards the end of the tunnel, where there are stars just out of sight. “I don’t want to be… what I am, anymore, Boyd.”

Boyd stares.

“I’ve been… in-between, for an eternity, now. I’m tired of wandering. Tired of being _chased_ , for Pete’s sake, I want… I want to _stop_ , and that means--” He gives a weak smile. “A light has dawned in the land of the shadow of death--”

“ _No_ ,” Boyd hisses, and he swears the mountain trembles. “You are _rage_ , Raylan, it’s _engraved_ in you, innate, ingrown. You can _recite_ the entire blasted book but it doesn’t change the fact that you are--”

“ _Human_ , Boyd, I don’t know how many times we have to bleed or heck--” Raylan hits the wall behind him, “nearly _die_ for you to accept--”

“Never compare yourself to them,” Boyd snaps. “You are so much more than they could ever hope to be.”

Silence falls between them. He doesn’t look at Raylan, focusing somewhere around his boots, dirty and soot-stained.  

Finally, Raylan hums. “Why do you hate them so much?”

Boyd’s answer is fast. “Because they do not deserve Him.”

“Wouldn’t you say that’s His decision?”

Boyd exhales deep, smoke and coal and must, and rolls his answer around on his tongue like liquor, before finally settling on, “Sometimes, we do not know what is best for us.” He looks up to find Raylan watching him intently.

“And you do?” Raylan smirks humorlessly, eyes unreadable.

“I know to trust His plan better than they.”

“What happened to free will?” Raylan says, only half-joking, and Boyd shakes his head.

“A tiger cannot change its stripes, Raylan,” he drawls, and Raylan scoffs, pushes to his feet, dust falling off his clothes, from his hair.  

“So I am condemned to purgatory? Doesn’t seem fair, for a man trying to seek forgiveness.”

“You are no man,” Boyd snaps. “And neither am I.”

Raylan just looks at him, and Boyd feels the ghost of his lips over his skin, feels the acute, thousand stabs of loss, of heartbreak -- _feathers plucked one by one_ \-- the most stupidly _human_ of feelings and Boyd feels his expression harden, hopes it chases Raylan away, hopes he never comes back to this forsaken mountain, let Boyd be in peace, building his own damn Eden--

“Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going,” Raylan says. It is almost a whisper.

Boyd has never told Raylan, but he saw him as he Fell.

He knows Raylan wasn’t actually there; it was a hallucination, a shard of a memory getting unstuck from his mind in all the chaos, but still he saw the demon in that bloody battlefield, smiling, reaching out an oil slick hand, and Boyd, as his wings were ripped from his spine, one by one, reached back.

When Raylan leaves, Boyd feels his insides crumble to ash and thinks, _Harlan is no place for redemption._

 

8.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” Raylan says softly around the mouth of his bottle, leaning back against the counter. Boyd levels him a look.

“And what is it that I’m doing?” he asks. Raylan doesn’t answer for a moment, taking a long pull from his beer, looking around Ava’s kitchen, at its flower magnets and cluttered countertops and the sparkling windchime spinning gently in the window. A place Boyd still can’t quite believe he’s standing in.

They hear the low rumble of Ava’s car pulling around the drive. Raylan sets down his beer and settles his hat back on his head, gives it the routine tug at the brim. Boyd watches, still, forgotten bottle sweating in his hand.

“It’s not quite as fun if someone saves my soul for me,” Raylan says.

Boyd watches him leave.

 

 

9.

Boyd has his hands on Raylan’s chest, trying to stop the wave of blood from pouring out around his fingers but his hands are too small, too fucking small, and there is too much of Raylan’s insides open and exposed and--

Boyd sobs, and Raylan reaches up a hand, finds Boyd’s cheek and _God damn him_ , he _smiles_.

“It’s okay, darlin,” Raylan breathes, wet and rattling, and Boyd shakes his head so hard his vision blurs.

“You’re not leaving me,” he insists. He can hear the sirens down the mountain, knows the whole damn cavalry is hurtling towards them but he also knows they won’t get here in time. Not with the way these roads wind, and he used to love the mountain paths, keeping out those without nerve or purpose, but now he has never hated anything more.

“It’s okay,” Raylan says again. “Boyd,” and the name sounds like a prayer, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Boyd almost laughs, the noise yanked out of him. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“I’m sorry,” Raylan says, smiling, showing red teeth and God, how their positions have switched would be hilarious if Boyd weren’t losing the only thing that matters.

“I forgive you, then, you bastard,” Boyd tells him, because it seems to be what Raylan wants to hear, and Boyd knows, suddenly, with blinding certainty, that Raylan is the one he was meant to bring to the Light, and even if Boyd does not get to follow him, then at least-- at least--

He bends his head over Raylan and starts to pray.

He has known the words for longer than he has been alive. They tumble out of him now, rusted and ancient, falling into Raylan’s skin, his blood, his breath. Boyd feels Raylan’s hand move to his hair, just holding him there, like giving a blessing, but Boyd does not stop, moves through every prayer ever written and when he runs out, and Raylan’s hand goes heavy in his hair, Boyd moves to prayers of his own, prayers he wrote for Raylan, even in all the years he pretended he had forgotten how.

The sirens close in, and Boyd presses a kiss to Raylan’s forehead, before darkness surges up and robs the world of its light.

 

 

10.

Boyd wakes in the hospital, for once not handcuffed to the bed, with a nurse refilling a water pitcher across the room. There is a crucifix over her head and he stares at it for a long while, until the nurse turns around and yelps at finding him awake.

Then it’s doctors and vitals and someone telling him he’d been shot, and he hadn’t even realized it, so focused on Raylan as he’d been. There’s a blood-stained gauze patch over his abdomen, and they tell him he’s a lucky son of a bitch but Boyd just feels raw and numb and exhausted. His eyes keep drifting back to the crucifix, and he quietly hopes that Raylan got to Heaven. He does not pray. He thinks he might’ve finally exhausted his allotment.

Boyd drifts in and out of consciousness for a while, but the next time he opens his eyes, he finds none other than Chief Deputy Art Mullen at his bedside.

Art is staring at him hard, and Boyd stares back.

When he realizes Boyd isn’t going to pass out again, Art grunts, like it’s hurting him to talk to Boyd in a civilized manner, “I came here to say,” and Boyd arches an eyebrow, because it’s the only part of him that doesn’t hurt to move right now. “Thank you.”

Boyd stares at him, bewildered. Art nods decisively and gets to his feet. “I consider us even now,” he points at Boyd, shaking his head as he moves to leave. “You two idiots deserve each other.”

Boyd blinks at the door frame as Art disappears, and the drugs they gave him must be otherworldly, because none other than a crystal clear hallucination of Raylan Givens comes around the corner not five minutes later.

It’s the most bizarre hallucination Boyd has ever experienced, because Raylan’s in a hospital gown and socks and pushing an IV stand, and then some nurse out in the hall starts hollering, and Raylan gives Boyd the biggest grin he’s ever seen.

“It wasn’t even that great,” the hallucination says, still smiling as it hobbles closer. “I mean, it was pretty, sure, but there wasn’t any big blinding light, and I definitely didn’t see my life flash before my eyes.”

Boyd can feel wetness on his cheeks. He thinks he might be crying.

“Met your Dad, though. He was nice,” and the vision reaches out, takes Boyd’s hand off the sheets, twines his fingers through his, warm and solid and calloused and _real_ , and Boyd squeezes, hard, feels strength flood between them. “Figured I’d stick around here with you, though, if that’s alright.”

Boyd tugs him down in answer, and Raylan’s laugh sounds like bells.

**Author's Note:**

> Boyd 10000% healed Raylan with his super magic praying powers
> 
> lmfao hope you enjoyed
> 
> (i own nothing Justified) (is this still a thing ppl have to clarify i've been on AO3 for a long ass time i don't know what the kids these days do)


End file.
